UK universities have failed to protect gender-critical academics from bullying and career-threatening restrictions on their research
Researchers investigating vital issues have been subjected to sustained campaigns of intimidation simply for acknowledging the biological and social importance of sex.
My favourite tidbit however is this:
The latest report’s call for evidence received 140 responses, the majority from people agreeing with gender-critical views – defined as a belief that biological sex is unchanging and should not be conflated with gender.
It’s the “gender-critical” fucks that conflate sex with gender! That’s the whole point, they claim gender and sex is the same thing so you can’t change your gender cause you can’t change your chomosomes, etc.
It’s so incredibly dishonest to read “biological sex is unchanging and should not be conflated with gender” as support for gender critical views, I’m honestly speechless.
(Edit) I think what it really does is retconning the recent court ruling, as if it was always obvious that legal protections for women only apply to people who menstruate, and if trans women thought those protections apply to them it’s because they thought they can menstruate. It’s retrospectively saying, “it was never even debated whether those laws should consider sex or gender, it was always clear those laws are about biological sex and people who thought otherwise were conflating sex with gender”.
Yeah, fair enough, the sentiment that sex and gender are totally different things that shouldn’t be conflated isn’t a gender critical argument (although I have seen gender critical people use it, cynically, of course), it’s a sentiment popularized by people who haven’t thought about sex and gender deeply enough to realize how meaningless it is. Many people who parrot it are supportive of trans people, even if they don’t really understand us very well.
I’m that well meaning person who doesn’t understand very well. :)
Do you mean that sex and gender are not the same thing but they are interconnected in our lived experience?
I mean something a little deeper than that. I literally mean that “sex” doesn’t exist as such. I know this is a strong claim, maybe unbelievable if you’ve never heard it before, but give me a second to explain.
What do we mean by “sex”?
Do we mean chromosomes? If so, there aren’t two sexes, there are a whole bunch, look at the list on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_anomalies
Do we mean genitals? If so, again, there aren’t two distinct sexes, instead it’s more of a spectrum between “this is obviously a penis” and “this is obviously a vulva”. In fact, infants with genitals that can’t be neatly classified as a penis or a vulva frequently have surgery forced upon them and these (completely unnecessary) surgeries cause all sorts of issues later in life.
Do we mean hormonal profile? Again, it’s not as straightforward as testosterone = male, estrogen = female. The endocrine system is wildly complicated and the ratios of sex hormones people have can vary wildly. A person’s hormonal profile is also extremely changeable, which is something shitty right-wingers don’t want “biological sex” to be.
Do we mean size of gametes? This is the only option that even remotely makes sense, because it is true that in humans there are only two kinds of gametes, small gametes (sperm) and large gametes (eggs). Furthermore, there has never been a case of a human who produces both eggs and sperm, every human produces at most one of the two. But lots of people are completely infertile, producing no gametes. So if by “sex” we mean the size of gametes someone produces, then there are a whole lot of people who are sexless because they produce no gametes.
But ok, size of gamete produced almost works as a definition of “sex”. So maybe we could look at the gonads in people who don’t produce gametes and make a determination of their sex that way. Well, it turns out that doesn’t work either, because there are people with both ovarian tissue and testicular tissue, and sometimes these tissues are even mixed together in the same organ (called “streak gonads”).
So what are we left with? Nothing. There’s nothing to “sex”, it’s a meaningless term. Listen to any shitty right-winger try and define “biological sex” and you’ll hear them eventually say something like “a male is someone whose reproductive system is geared towards producing sperm”. But what does that mean? Fuck all, I’d say. What shitty right-wingers mean is “a female is someone who I think is a woman”. They’re all of them, to a person, talking about gender every time they say “biological sex”. They’ll deny it, but ask them about intersex people, or people with ambiguous genitalia or streak gonads, and you’ll get nonsense in response.
I’ve whiled away many a hilarious hour reading terfs (on ovarit, before it shutdown) arguing about which particular intersex people count as women. They never agree, there is no “party line”, it’s all vibes and always has been.
Does this make sense? Is this helpful?
This is immensely helpful, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this.
If you don’t mind me asking, I’ve heard people say sex is a spectrum and what you described kinda sounds like that to me, why do you say sex is a meaningless term?
Sex as a spectrum is easier for me to grasp than the idea that biological sex just doesn’t exist at all.
I don’t like calling it a spectrum for the simple reason that it’s not clear to me that there’s always a sensible way to say someone is “more female” or “more male” than someone else.
Like, if someone is born with a penis and ovaries, are they closer to the “male” side of the spectrum or the “female” side? How do they compare to someone born with a vulva and testicles? Which of these people is more male? Which more female? Do we give primacy to what we can see outside the body (the genitals) or to the gonads, which we can’t see, but are much more important to gamete production than genitals?
I know these hypotheticals are rare, it’s extremely, extremely rare to be born with a penis and ovaries, or a vulva and testicles. But it is possible, and I just don’t see how we can reasonably say which is “more male” or “more female”.
Thank you so much for the patience!
Thanks for asking questions and being willing to listen!